In general, people perceive a stereoscopic effect physiologically and experientially. In three-dimensional image display technology, a stereoscopic effect of an object is produced by using binocular parallax, which is a primary factor in recognizing a stereoscopic effect at a short distance.
Stereoscopic images are viewed using methods involving wearing of spectacles and methods not involving wearing of spectacles.
Typical methods not involving wearing of spectacles include a lenticular method in which a lenticular lens plate having an array of vertically arranged cylindrical lenses is formed in front of an image panel, and a parallax barrier method that separates left-eye and right-eye images using a barrier to obtain a stereoscopic effect. For example, the parallax barrier has a merit that it may convert an image between a 2D mode and a 3D mode, and therefore it is widely applied to stereoscopic display devices in the form of notebooks, mobile phones, etc.
FIG. 1 is a schematic view of a stereoscopic display device in case of displaying a 2D image according to a conventional parallax barrier, and FIG. 2 is a schematic view a stereoscopic display device in case of displaying a 3D image according to a conventional parallax barrier.
As shown in FIG. 1 and FIG. 2, a stereoscopic image display device includes a display panel 10, a barrier 20 and a light source 30, for displaying 2D and 3D images.
The display panel 10 includes right-eye pixels for displaying a right-eye image and left-eye pixels for displaying a left-eye image.
The light source 30 is placed in a rear of the display panel 10 to provide light for the respective liquid crystal pixels of the display panel 10.
In addition, the barrier 20 is placed in front of the display panel 10 and includes liquid crystal cells corresponding to respective the right-eye and the left-eye pixels. The liquid crystal cell is varied to be transparent or opaque and functions to shutter image displayed on the display panel 10, and therefore, it is also called a liquid crystal shutter. In more detail, as shown in FIG. 1, when the display panel 10 displays a 2D image, the liquid crystal cells all are varied to be transparent so that they allow the image displayed on the display panel 10 to pass directly therethrough. Also, as shown in FIG. 2, when the display panel 10 displays a 3D image according to whether the displayed image is the left-eye image or the right-eye image, one group in the two groups of the right-eye pixels and the left-eye pixels becomes transparent to form a transparent region, and another group therein becomes opaque to form an opaque region.
With such a structure, 2D and 3D images can be selectively displayed.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore, it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person or ordinary skill in the art.